GLENDALE  LYCEUM] 


Withdrawn 

Ace.  No....  Call  No. 


»*A**»ir 


lyrics 

of 

3l&eal  ana  ttye  ifteal 


BY 
COATES  KJNNEY 


Copyright 


PESSIM    AND    OPTIM 


PESSIM 


To  think!  to  think  and  never  rest  from  thinking! 
To  feel  this  great  globe  flying  through  the  sky 
And  reckon  by  the  rising  and  the  sinking 
Of  stars  how  long  to  live,  how  soon  to  die ! 


This,  this  is  life.     Is  life,  then,  worth  the  living? 
This  plotting  for  his  freedom  by  the  slave! 
This  agony  of  loving  and  forgiving ! 
This  effort  of  the  coward  to  be  brave ! 


Our  freedom !     We  are  sin-scourged  into  being, 
And  ills  of  birth  enslave  us  all  our  days ; 
No  chance  of  flying  and  no  way  of  fleeing, 
Until  the  last  chance  and  the  end  of  ways. 


M209382 


We  are  walled  in  by  darkness — wall  behind  us, 
From  whose  sprung  dungeon -gates  Fate  dragged  us  in, 
And  wall  before  us,  where  Fate  waits  to  bind  us 
And  thrust  us  out  through  swinging  gates  of  sin. 


But  what  is  Fate?  It  is  a  mere  breath  spoken, 
To  echo  clamoring  between  the  walls 
Of  darkness — blind  phrase  uttered  to  betoken 
This  blind  Unreason  which  our  life  enthralls. 


Out  through  abysmal  depths  of  heaven  round  us 
We  think  our  way  past  orbs  of  day  and  night, 
Till  skies  of  empty  outer  darkness  bound  us 
And  place  and  time  are  fixed  pin-points  of  light ; 


But  nowhere  from  the  silent  planets  wheeling, 
And  nowhere  from  the  thundering  hell  of  suns, 
And  nowhere  in  the  darkness  comes  revealing 
Itself  a  Fate  that  through  all  being  runs. 


•o-  5  o- 

No  ghostly  presence,  no  mysterious  voices, 
The  midnight  of  these  infinite  spaces  thrill ; 
And  even  chaos  flies  hence  and  rejoices 
To  find  and  feel  yon  universe's  Will. 


Thought  follows  chaos — nay,  without  the  places 
And  times  of  matter  globed  and  motion  whirled, 
Thought  chaos  is,  a  spread  dead  wing  in  space  is, 
Drifting  for  wafture  somewhere  toward  a  world. 


Where  shall  it  reach  and  touch  the  Will  Universal? 
How  with  its  confines  bound  an  Infinite  Mind? 
One  atom  of  the  Allsoul's  whole  dispersal 
Assuming  how  the  whole  shall  be  defined! 


Such  thinkings  are  not  Thought,  they  are  but  dreamings 
Of  what  perchance  may  be  itself  but  dream ; 
Our  truths  are  to  the  Truth  as  moonlight's  gleamings 
In  dungeon  are  to  open  midiioon's  beam. 


All  worlds  of  matter,  all  the  world  of  spirjt, 
How  these  are  one,  eternal,  increate — 
Soul  can  not  clutch  it,  sense  come  never  near  it; 
It  is  unthinkable,  and  it  is  Fate! 


This  awful  riddle,  wherewith  we  have  struggled 
Since  the  dim  dawn  of  human  consciousness, 
With  whatsoever  dread  words  we  have  juggled — 
Ptah,  Zeus,  Jove,  God — we  fail,  we  fail  to  guess. 


Whether  there  be  of  all  intelligences 

A  total  sum,   a  comprehending  whole — 

Great  sea,  wherefrom  rise  all  these  mists,  the  senses, 

And  back  whereto  flow  all  the  streams  of  soul? 


Whether  this  lives,  a  selfexistent  Essence, 
With  its  own  passions,  wills,  imaginings, 
Or  is  but  everlasting  evanescence, 
But  perfume  of  the  bloom  of  living  things? 


•»  7 


How  cosmic  spirit  can  take  hold  of  matter 
And  give  dead  elements  the  living  breath? 
How  gather  into  selfhoods,  and  how  scatter, 
To  work  the  miracles  of  life  and  death  ? 


Poets  in  grand  imagination's  trances 
Conceive  the  gods  and  give  them  wondrous  birth, 
And  martyrs  bleed  for  Faith's  divine  romances, 
And  priests  go  forth  to  proselyte  the  earth ; 


But  what  terrestrial  religion  reaches 

Out  into  heaven's  majesty  so  far 

That  it  can  guess  what  god  strange  nature  teaches 

To  the  strange  dwellers  on  the  nearest  star? 


Is  Buddha  known  to  denizens  of  Saturn? 
Is  Jesus  preached  upon  the  Jovian  moons? 
And  what  are  gods  of  any  earthly  pattern 
To  far  spheres  drifting  in  the  Force-monsoons? 


Yon  sun's  flame,  in  whose  glare  our  worlds  go  darkling 
To  eyes  that  from  another  system  gaze — 
Yon  flaming  sun  is  but  a  glimmer  sparkling 
To  like  worlds  blotted  in  the  Dogstar's  blaze. 


And,  howsoever  gravitation  labors, 

It  lets  a  million  suns  from  vision  slip; 

While  the  ten  million  world-groups  are  not  neighbors 

Even  by  light's  fine  far  swift  fellowship. 


How  these  immensities  dwarf  and  obscure  us ! 
What,  what  are  we  amid  such  scenes  as  these? 
Our  earth  unguessed  in  planets  of  Arcturus, 
Undreamed  in  orbs  around  the  Pleiades! 


By  such  infinitudes  of  distance  bounded 
(These  chasms  of  darkness  that  no  light  can  leap), 
We  seem  a  dream  with  glooms  of  sleep  surrounded — 
'Our  little  life  is  rounded  with  a  sleep!' 


OPTIM 

Ay,  we  are  dreamed ;  and,  if  ever  the  Dreamer 
Wake  from  the  sleep  to  remember  the  dream, 
We  of  His  waking  shall  thrill  in  the  tremor, 
Dawn  with  His  memory,  mingle  and  stream. 

What  though  He  slumber  through  eon  on  eon? 
When  He  has  dreamed  all  the  infinite  full, 
Dreamed  all  the  worlds  and  the  lives  there  to  be  on, 
Out  to  dreamed  gravity's  uttermost  pull; 

Dreamed  forth  of  matter  and  force  interblended 
(Storm-drifts  of  matter  and  torrents  of  force) 
Cyclones  of  flame,  globed,  exploded,  and  rended — 
Wide  wild  beginnings  of  Time's  endless  course ; 

Dreamed  out  of  chaos  the  suns  in  the  spaces, 
Dreamed  down  the  suns  to  their  white  molten  cores, 
Dreamed  off  the  worlds  in  their  systemal  places, 
Over  them  dreaming  the  continent-floors 


olO 


Out  of  their  pulps  of  fire — dreaming  the  oceans 
Out  of  the  rain  from  their  heavens  of  steam, 
And  of  their  mad  elemental  commotions 
Molding  the  motions  of  life  in  His  dream ; 


Dreaming  the  marvelous  atoms  together 
Into  the  miracles  feeling  and  thought, 
Hitching,  with  matter's  mysterious  tether, 
Selfhoods  of  sense  to  insensible  naught; 


Dreaming  the  span  of  the  measureless  chasm 
Yawning  between  the  alive  and  the  dead — 
Wonder  of  dreams  in  the  organless  plasm 
Crawling  to  soul  from  the  sea's  oozy  bed — 


Feeling  to  soul  in  the  sea's  vital  foment, 
Feeling  to  form  and  to  faculties  dim, 
Till,  at  the  touch  of  a  consummate  moment, 
Loosed  into  freedom  to  rise  and  to  swim — 


11 


Swimming  of  dreams  in  the  nightmare  of  waters! 
Hydras,  chimeras,  and  gorgons  of  sleep, 
That  by  transitions  of  mutual  slaughters 
Play  the  dream-tragedy  Life  in  the  deep; 


When  His  long  dream  through  the  spawning  and  swarming 
Sea-generations  has  passed  into  things 
Creeping  aland,  and  has  risen  transforming 
Into  the  slow  apparition  of  wings ; 


When  from  the  budding  of  nerves  in  the  banded 
Spirals  of  earth-crawling  pleasure  and  pain 
Upward  has  issued  His  dream  and  expanded 
Into  the  glorified  blooming  of  brain — 


Flower  of  all  the  world's  forces  and  ages, 
Top-bloom  of  matter  exhaling  the  soul, 
Opening  volume  whose  unopened  pages 
Yet  of  God's  being  shall  utter  the  wholo, — 


Here  from  His  dream  shall  He  start  into  waking — 
Dream  of  the  universe  waking  in  Me — 
Me  as  a  shore  where  the  great  billows  breaking 
Leap  out  of  silence  in  sounds  of  the  sea ! 


Here,  in  the  self  of  Me,  here  wakes  the  Dreamer, 
Wakes  and  shall  wake  as  the  brain  shall  unfold; 
Here  is  the  Christ  of  God,  here  the  Redeemer, 
Spirit  incarnate  that  Faith  has  foretold. 


Growth  of  the  brain  shall  be  God  manifested 
Here  in  the  flesh,  when  the  dead  shall  arise, 
By  an  inherited  memory  vested 
With  the  immortal  life  dreamed  of  the  skies. 


When,  through  heredity  raised  and  perfected, 
Faculties  now  in  the  germ  shall  have  bloomed, 
All  the  forgotten  shall  be  recollected, 
All  that  is  buried  shall  be  disentombed. 


Whatso  has  ever  with  being  been  gifted, 
Since  the  first  givings  of  being  began, 
Living  again  shall  be  gathered  and  lifted 
Into  the  sovereign  consciousness,  Man. 


He  shall  remember  all  living  and  dying, 
He  shall  think  back  to  life's  origin  here — 
Nay,  shall  recall  when  he  hither  came  flying, 
Seed  of  life  ripened  in  some  other  sphere — 


Brought  by  some  inter-world  wind  accidental, 
Or  by  some  gravity's  fated  monsoon, 
Hence  to  be  traced  by  that  form  rudi mental 
Haply  through  all  forms  of  life  on  the  moon. 


So  shall  he  read  the  soul's  mystery-story, 
Turning  the  pages  from  star  back  to  star, 
Now  in  the  gloom  and  again  in  the  glory, 
Till  he  shall  come  where  the  last  secrets  are. 


Then,  thus  with  insight  illumined  to  seeing 
All  that  has  been,  he  shall  see  all  that  is — 
Thrill  with  the  pulses  of  all  the  world's  being, 
Make  all  the  God  of  the  universe  his. 


Yet  shall  he,  ere  that  divine  consummation, 
All  the  career  of  existence  have  run, 
World  after  world,  to  his  last  habitation — 
Seraph  of  light  on  the  ultimate  sun; 


Sun,  of  the  globes  of  all  systems  compacted, 
Orb,  of  all  motion  the  center  and  rest 
(Time  to  a  moment  eternal  contracted), 
Goal  of  all  spirits  immortal  and  blest. 


They  shall  be  one,  though  their  number  be  legion, 
And  with  one  consciousness  they  shall  revive 
Into  the  bliss  of  that  radiant  region 
All  of  the  past  that  was  ever  alive. 


Thus  we  shall  share  in  the  last  resurrection; 
So  shall  the  mind  of  the  angels  recall 
Us  and  all  creatures,  and  that  recollection 
Be  the  salvation  in  heaven  for  all. 


PESSIM 


But  this  longing  to  live! 

This  tragical  strife 
Of  us  mortals  to  give 

Our  lives  more  of  life! 


Give  us  new!  give  us  more! 

We  hunger,  we  thirst, 
We  aspire,  we  implore — 

Give  most,  best  or  worst! 

We  inherit  the  ages 

Of  human  desire ; 
Ay,  within  us  yet  rages 

The  older  brute-fire. 


All  that  is  we  have  been, 
Of  air,  earth,  or  sea ; 

Whether  wing,  foot,  or  fin, 
One  kindred  are  we. 

In  our  blood  flowing  down 

From  primitive  man, 
Savage,  saint,  sage,  and  clown 

Have  blent  as  it  ran. 


All  their  lives  are  our  life, 
Their  lusts  are  our  lust; 

And  we  strive  with  their  strife, 
Then — dust  to  their  dust! 


.OPTIM 

Dust  to  dust?    No,  that  doom 

We  will  not  endure! 
Us  the  prisoning  tomb 

Shall  never  immure! 


When  the  star-stuff  of  heaven 
From  God  was  outwhirled 

It  was  stirred  with  the  leaven 
Of  life  of  the  world. 

PESSIM 

God?    And  where  then  was  man? 

OPTIM 

Lo,  God  and  man  one 
Ere  the  fire-mist  began 
To  swirl  in  to  sun  ! 

For  man's  wills  and  desires 

Repeat  and  rehearse 
Those  which  motived  the  gyres 

Of  this  universe. 

Ay,  and  not  only  his, 

But  those  of  the  whole 
Life  that  was  and  that  is 

Of  God,  the  One  Soul. 


Life  eternally  must 
Be  motion  of  Him — 

From  dull  worms  in  the  dust 
To  keen  seraphim. 

Every  pleasure  and  pain, 

Of  stir  in  the  clod 
Or  of  thrill  in  the  brain, 

Is  living  of  God. 

Life  shall  vanish  away 
And  finish  its  course 

When  He  ceases  to  play 
With  matter  and  force. 

PESSIM 

Will  He  cease? 

OPTIM 

No,  He  never, 
Till  matter  is  hurled 
Into  naught,  can  dissever 
Himself  from  the  world. 


All  delights  and  all  doles — 
Thought,  passion,  and  strife — 

Are  the  Infinite  Soul's 
Large  living  of  life. 

PESSIM 

Then,  on  whom  Faith  has  leaned 
Lives  not;  for  it  seems 

We  are  whims  of  some  Fiend 
That  slumbers  and  dreams! 

Unimaginable  Demon ! 

With  cosmic  fire-storms 
In  His  crazed  sleep  to  dream  on 

And  dream  into  forms! 

Lo,  a  huge  fancy  runs 
Athwart  His  vast  sleep, 

And  ten  millions  of  suns 
Blaze  out  in  the  deep. 


-o-  20  -> 


His  deliriums  dim 

In  meteors  flock, 
And  with  whimseys  of  Him 

Wild  stars  intershock. 


All  the  rocks  are  one  tomb 
Of  moods  of  His  mind, 

Cast  away  to  make  room 
For  us  living  kind; 


Phantoms!  dancing  and  hymning, 
While  here  where  we  dwell 

Is  but  film  overswimming 
An  ocean  of  hell ! 


Smoking  peaks  burst  in  thunder 
And  shower  down  death, 

And  the  plains  gape  asunder 
With  doom  in  a  breath. 


Commerce  rises  and  dips 
With  east  and  west  sun, 

As  her  shuttles,  the  ships, 
Weave  states  into  one; 


But  the  sea,  the  brute  sea, 
That  swings  round  the  sphere, 

Never  heeds  the  wild  plea 
Of  man  in  his  fear : 


Him  and  his  its  rude  surges 
Toss,  buffet,  and  drown, 

As  it  yawns  in  its  gurges 
And  ravens  them  down. 


And  the  beasts  of  the  deep, 
Like  phantoms  that  form 

In  the  nightmares  of  sleep — 
Grim  monsters  that  swarm 


In  the  darkness  of  waters, 
And  gorge  mouth  and  maw 

With  their  mutual  slaughters 
By  snout,  tooth,  and  jaw — 


How  the  swift  silent  beasts 
In  combat  partake 

Of  the  fattening  feasts 
The  mad  billows  make! 


'Lord  of  life  and  of  death, 
Have  mercy  on  me ! ' 

Cry  that  squanders  the  breath 
On  storm,  night,  and  sea. 


Cry  for  God's  mercy  where, 

In  maniac  bout 
With  the  powers  of  the  air, 

The  great  waters  shout? 


AVhere  from  mountains'  pent  hollows 

Hell  bursts  out  on  men? 
Where  earth  opens  and  swallows 

And  closes  again? 


Cry  for  mercy  where  thunder 
Drops  death  from  the  clouds? 

Where  the  ghosts  rise  from  under 
And  mix  with  the  crowds 


Of  the  living,  unheard, 
Unseen,  and  unknown, 

Till  with  mortal  plague  stirred 
The  scared  cities  groan  ? 


Mercy !     No,  there  is  none 

In  whatever  force 
Wherewithal  the  Lord  Sun 

Gives  life  and  death  source. 


'  Fire ! '  A  cry  in  the  night — 
One  cry,  and  no  more 

Ere  the  streets  fill  with  fright 
And  clamor  and  roar. 


To  the  flames  all  the  city! 

Stop  not  now  to  call 
That  Almighty  have  pity— 

The  water  has  all. 


'O  my  husband!— my  child!' 

A  mother  and  wife 
In  the  first  terror  wild 

Has  fled  for  her  life 


From  the  room  where  she  kept 
Love's  wake  by  dead  love, 

And  her  innocent  slept 
Unfathered  above. 


'  Dead ! — dear  love ! '     Off  she  flings 

Whoever  delays 
Her  mad  purpose,  and  springs 

Back  into  the  blaze. 


Through  the  flame  and  the  smoke, 

Past  him  lying  dead, 
Up  the  stair,  scorch  and  choke, 

To  find  the  babe's  bed! 


Scarce  a  moment  to  speak 
One  vain  phrase  of  prayer 

Ere  the  woman's  death-shriek, 
And,  framed  in  the  glare 


Through  the  window  revealed, 

A  picture  that  robbed 
Men  of  breath,  and  down  kneeled 

The  women  and  sobbed; 


->26-o 


Picture,  flashed  upon  flame, 
Of  two  forms  in  white ! 

Then  picture  and  frame 
One  red  blur  of  night ! 


Was  it  rage,  was  it  ire 
Of  some  god  above? 

Or,  mad  hunger  of  fire 
For  woman's  mad  love? 


Woman's  love!  Love  belongs 
To  Force,  and  is  part 

Of  the  rights  and  the  wrongs 
Of  dull  Nature's  heart. 


How  is  Force  when  it  burns 
And  flares  out  its  breath 

Worse  than  Force  when  it  yearns 
And  dares  unto  death? 


What  is  better  or  worse, 
Where  all  only  seems? 

What  is  blessing  or  curse, 
In  drama  of  dreams  ? 


What  is  saintship  or  sin? 

To  climb  or  to  fall, 
Or  to  lose  or  to  win? 

The  One  lives  it  all. 


'All  delights  and  all  doles- 
Thought,  passion,  and  strife — 

Are  the  Infinite  Soul's 
Large  living  of  life ! ' 


Is  it  living  of  thought 
Or  living  of  trance  ? 

And  is  purpose  out  wrought 
From  chance  upon  chance? 


What  purpose  in  killing 
My  darling,  my  boy? 

What  demoniac  thrilling 
Of  infinite  joy 


From  the  little  life  lying 
In  fever's  hot  flame 

And  in  last  anguish  crying 
The  mother's  fond  name? 


Stricken  wife  of  my  youth! 

O,  how  from  that  day 
Didst  thou  pine  for  what  truth 

Death's  morrow  might  say! 


In  the  hope  of  that  morrow, 
Thou,  patient  and  brave 

With  thy  burden  of  sorrow, 
Soon  went  to  the  grave 


In  the  travail  of  mother 

Of  that  little-one 
Who  should  follow  the  brother 

Ere  one  year  were  done. 


O,  the  faint  pulses'  warning! 

O,  loving  last  words ! 
In  the  spring,  in  the  morning, 

With  songs  of  the  birds! 


I  explore  all  the  dark, 
I  search  sleep  for  her; 

But  there  comes  not  a  spark, 
Or  whisper,  or  stir 


From  all  hearing,  all  seeing, 
All  feeling  of  Force, 

Hinting  whether  her  being 
Holds  conscious  its  course, 


So  that  still  might  be  shown 
Her  dear  form  and  face 

And  herself  still  be  known 
In  time  and  in  space. 


As  the  rose,  as  the  lily, 
Yield  up  scent  and  hue, 

Yield  their  ghosts  to  the  chilly 
White  death  of  the  dew, 


Did  my  home's  living  flowers 
So  fade  and  exhale? 

And  have  these  lives  of  ours 
No  other  avail 


Than  to  feel,  love,  and  think 
One  moment  of  light, 

And  then  suddenly  sink 
In  morningless  night? 


o  31  o 

Is  existence  too  rife 

In  earth's  human  hives, 

That  the  Life  of  all  life 
Should  so  lavish  lives? 

t 

Lives  of  men,  lives  of  brutes, 
They  crowd  to  their  tombs, 

Like  the  leaves,  like  the  fruits, 
Which  fall  for  new  blooms. 


OPTIM 

Famine,  pestilence,  flood, 
Fire,  thunder,  and  quakes 

Of  the  earth,  and  the  blood 
Volcanic  that  breaks 


From  the  hot  veins  of  mountains, 
And  tempests  that  plow 

The  great  deep  to  its  fountains — 
Does  God,  thinkest  thou, 


Heed  of  thee  in  thy  plaint 
That  these  never  choose 

Between  sinner  and  saint 
Where  life  is  to  lose? 


Holy  Jews,  ye  that  priced 
God's  life,  and  decried 

The  immaculate  Christ, 
And  him  crucified ; 


Ye,  with  credos  for  charters 
vTo  hunt  and  to  slay, 

That  re-sainted  with  martyrs 
Bartholomew's  day; 


Ye  that  bloodied  the  ages 
With  myriad  lives'  loss 

In  religion's  blind  rages 
Of  Crescent  and  Cross ; 


Ye  that  fire  martial  leaders 

With  adulant  breath, 
Making  mothers  proud  breeders 

Of  doers  of  death- 


All  the  civilizations 

Of  man  standing  armed, 
Nation  fronting  each  nation's 

Blood-hunger,  alarmed, — 


How  would  dare  ye  appeal 
To  God  that  He  make 

The  brute  elements  feel 
For  your  human  sake? 


God  is  you  and  in  you, 
As  they  and  in  them ; 

And  shall  one  of  His  two 
The  other  condemn? 


PESSIM 

Where  is  fault,  then,  or  sin 

In  them  or  in  us — 
We  and  all  we  are  in 

Unpurposed  as  thus? 

For  be  all  forms  and  motions 
Divine,  and  they  seem 

But  the  miscreate  notions 
Of  God  in  a  dream. 

OPTIM 

No!  the  seeming  is  thine; 

For,  could  all  the  mass 
Of  the  universe  shine 

Through  thy  little  glass; 

Could  the  Allbeing  flow 

Entire  into  thee, 
So  that  Substance  might  show 

And  Essence  might  see ; 


35 


Couldst  thou  know  what  beginning 

To  what  end  belongs; 
Couldst  thou  witness  Fate  spinning 

The  Right  out  of  wrongs, — 


Thou  wouldst  rise  from  the  dark 

Wherein  flesh  is  born, 
And  with  song  like  the  lark 

Soar  into  the  morn. 


No!  the  dreaming  is  ours; 

God's  life  is  not  trance, 
But  the  sum  of  the  powers 

Of  all  lives'  advance. 


How  we  struggle  to  live! 

God  urges  the  strife 
Of  all  beings  to  give 

Their  lives  more  of  life. 


From  the  instinct  that  lurked 
In  plasm  of  old  seas 

He  and  we  have  upworked 
Through  myriad  degrees, 


Climbing  higher  and  higher, 
With  gain  upon  gain, 

Till  at  last  the  soul's  fire 
Is  lit  in  the  brain. 


In  this  upward  progression, 

Humanity's  birth 
Is  the  highest  expression 

Of  God  on  the  earth. 


Yet  the  heavens  are  swarmed 
With  worlds  older  far; 

And  what  lives,  angel-formed, 
May  people  a  star, 


Neither  spectroscope's  feel 
Nor  telescope's  ken 

Shall  avail  to  reveal 
To  senses  of  men. 


But  these  five  senses  grew, 
As  others  may  grow — 

Senses  so  searching-through, 
Brain  facultied  so, 


Seized  of  force  by  such  arts, 
That  mind  may  embrace 

Other  mind  in  far  parts 
Of  infinite  space. 


Other  mind  may  be  there 
With  powers  so  strange 

That  our  own  would  not  dare 
Imagine  their  range. 


Can  these  pinholes  of  sight 
Of  ours  comprehend 

With  what  uses  of  light 
High  beings  may  send 


The  quick  soul  through  the  dense 
Vast  darkness  of  naught, 

And  by  some  inner  sense 
See  us  and  our  thought? 


And  to  what  fuller  blowth 
This  flesh  shall  unfold, 

What  the  grandeur  of  growth 
Its  energies  hold, 


Man  can  now  no  more  dream 
Than  through  his  life  dim 

In  the  worm  there  could  stream 
A  prescience  of  him. 


But  we  know  that  we  climb; 

We  see  that  we  rise — 
See  how  time  unto  time 

We  widen  the  skies. 


From  the  ten  fingers*  count 
Of  numbers,  begun 

In  the  savage,  we  mount 
And  measure  the  sun. 


Fabled  Jupiter's  nods, 
That  Nature  obeyed, 

And  those  gorgonish  gods, 
Her  forces,  which  played 


Chiefest  part  in  mankind's 
Last  dream  before  day — 

All  the  myths  from  all  minds 
Have  faded  away, 


Where  the  Self-Kevelator 

Immanuel  stands 
As  the  human  creator 

By  human  love's  hands. 


God  is  with  us  and  in  us 

(Within  is  above), 
And  our  lives  work  to  win  us 

His  life  by  our  love. 


Whether  I  will  or  whether 
Will  not  as  He  would, 

All  with  all  things  together 
Work  only  for  good. 


All  the  wrong  I  commit, 

Mankind  so  unite 
To  exterminate  it 

They  strengthen  all  right. 


So,  we  grow  by  our  sins: 

Iscariot  betrays, 
And  the  Nazarene  wins 

Through  all  after  days. 

Lo,  the  Wrong  that  hath  died 

To  Hades  is  hurled. 
While  the  Right,  crucified, 

Redeemeth  the  world. 


PESSIM 

But  redemption  to  come! 

What  boots  that  to  thee, 
Thou  for  eons  then  dumb, 

Deaf,  dead  soul  of  me? 

What  is  this  we  have  dreamed? 

Whereto  have  we  raved? 
When  the  world  is  redeemed 

Shall  my  soul  be  saved? 


OPTIM 

Timid  soul !  thou  art  fleeing 

False  danger  :  fear  not ; 
For  thy  sweet  self  of  being 

Shall  ne'er  be  forgot. 

Man  inherits  the  ages, 

And  shall,   with  the  whole 

Of  his  grand  heritages, 
Inherit  the  soul. 

There  are  times  when  far  places, 
Where  strangers  we  roam, 

Flash  familiar  with  traces 
Of  some  former  home. 

There  are  hours  when  such  trances 

Efface  all  that  is 
That  we  dream  circumstances 

Of  past  centuries. 


•o-  4Co 

There  are  moments  we  hear 
A  dead  father's  tone 

In  our  voices,  so  clear 
It  startles  our  own. 


We  are  writ  in  as  books 
By  hands  from  the  skies, 

And  ghost-ancestry  looks 
Oft  out  of  our  eyes. 


These  are  half-resurrections 
Of  souls  that  are  gone — 

Dim  and  fitful  projections 
Of  that  coming  dawn 


Of  all-consciousness,  when 
In  Man  there  shall  stand 

The  whole  lives  of  past  men, 
So  livingly  scanned, 


o-44-o 


So  remembered,  so  real, 
So  self-substantive, 

That,  no  longer  ideal, 
They  truly  shall  live. 


Why  is  this  a  hard  saying? 

Heredity  grows, 
And  the  part  it  is  playing 

Shall  never  have  close. 


As  the  form  and  the  feature, 
The  tone  and  the  trait, 

The  whole  self  of  each  creature, 
Are  so  destinate 


From  the  procreant  mold, 
Shall  mind  not  progress 

Till  by  heirship  it  hold 
All  past  consciousness? 


And,  if  far-future  man 
Remember  so  me, 

From  the  hour  I  began 
Till  ceasing  to  be — 


So  revive  me,  so  live  me, 
So  breathe  my  soul's  breath- 

What  is  that  but  to  give  me 
Sure  triumph  o'er  death? 


O  immortal  my  soul! 

To  live  and  to  know 
And  flow  on  with  the  whole 

Divine  Being's  flow! 


O  my  soul!  from  the  dark 
Wherein  flesh  is  born 

Soar  and  sing  like  the  lark! 
For  here  is  the  morn  ! 


SAN  E 


Husband— What!  have  I  been  sleeping?  Have  I  dreamed?  Was  he  not  here? — 
'  Dead '  ?  Should  I  not  know  that  ?  Murdered ! — start  not,  all  my  brain  is  clear : 
Listen,  Agnes,  to  the  secret  I  have  kept  so  many  a  year. 

For  I  must  not  keep  it  longer ;  no,  when  I  am  lying  dead, 

When  the  next  year's  grass  is  growing  green  above  my  dreamless  head, 

I  would  have  you  tell  my  darling  what  her  dying  mother  said. 

Tell  her  I  was  madly  jealous— could  not  bear  that  there  should  be 

Any  shadow  of  a  turning  in  her  precious  love  for  me ; 

But  the  lapse  from  love  to  pity !  this  I  dared  not  live  to  see. 

47 


48  o 


So  I  charge  you,  so  I  swear  you,  wait  until  the  grass  above 
Him  and  me  has  thrown  one  mantle  and  the  cooing  turtledove 
Mourned  for  me  there  all  the  summer,  ere  you  rob  my  grave  of  love. 

For  my  sleep  must  be  beside  him — keeper,  you  will  promise  this? — 
Close  beside  him,  in  some  semblance  of  the  old  remembered  bliss 
When  I  lay  in  those  arms  folded  and  all  heaven  was  his  kiss. 

That  sweet  love  of  me  was  first  love,  and  it  wrought  in  him  like  pain, 
Earnest  so,  and  sad,  and  tender — O !  the  thought  burns  through  my  brain- 
Fear  not,  Agnes ! — I  am  dying — dying,  and  I  will  be  sane. 

Heavens,  how  that  dear  heart  loved  me !  But  I  was  a  favored  child, 
Whom  the  fondness  of  weak  parents  had  to  selfishness  beguiled — 
Had  made  willful,  proud,  exacting,  and  with  wayward  passions  wild. 

Yet  I  loved  him  all  my  nature;  and  with  tears  mine  eyes  would  swim 
Oft  in  thinking,  were  there  needed  such  a  sacrifice  for  him, 
I  would  gladly  give  my  body  to  be  rended  limb  from  limb. 


But  right  soon  I  felt  the  distance  of  his  thought  from  thought  of  mine — 
Felt  his  purpose  to  uplift  me  (true,  it  gave  no  outward  sign), 
And  my  selflove  flashed  resentful  toward  that  love  so  all  benign. 

To  my  mother  I  was  angel ;  to  my  father  I  was  queen ; 

Why  to  husband  should  there  failing,  fault,  or  flaw  in  me  be  seen  ? 

Why  to  him  was  I  not  perfect,  with  this  perfect  love  between  ? 

With  such  questions  in  my  bosom  rose  my  anger  and  my  pride ; 

All  my  will  I  set  against  him,  all  his  will  for  me  defied, 

And  disdained  to  live  his  living,  though  for  him  I  would  have  died. 

I  would  be  my  self-creator,  not  a  creature  of  his  own, 

In  the  fashion  of  his  fancy  made  by  him  for  him  alone ; 

He  should  have  me  as  he  took  me,  crowned  and  set  upon  a  throne ! 


deeper,  think  what  secret  devil  must  have  whispered  in  my  heart ! 
I  conceived  he  did  not  love  me,  deemed  his  fondness  was  but  art 
To  conceal  from  me  his  feeling  that  we  were  so  far  apart. 


I  was  jealous  of  his  silence — made  him  swear  it  o'er  and  o'er 

That  he  loved  me,  loved  me,  loved  me,  and  would  love  me  evermore ; 

Then  with  taunting  tears  I  chid  him  that  so  lovelessly  he  swore. 

He  grew  sad,  and  I  grew  sullen :  some  strange  fury  in  me  stirred 
When  we  tried  to  speak  together  and  he  pleaded  to  be  heard, 
And  I  stung  his  soul  to  anguish  with  the  woman's  last  rash  word. 

Never  I  his  wish  considered;  what  he  liked  not  I  would  praise; 
What  he  cherished  as  conviction  I  would  scoflf  at  as  but  craze ; 
And  I  said  that,  though  I  loved  him,  yet  I  hated  all  his  ways.  . 

He  was  generous,  but  human ;  and  at  times  his  anger  rose, 
In  what  words  of  hot  resentment  only  Heaven's  mercy  knows ; 
And  the  man's  uprising  always  had  the  woman's  stormy  close. 

Thus  unwisely,  thus  unwifely  ran  this  violence  its  course, 
Aiming  to  compel  affection,  bent  to  conquer  love  by  force ; 
Till  our  travesty  of  marriage  was  but  masking  of  divorce. 


But  our  little  daughter  Zilpah  was  the  rainbow  on  the  gloom — 
Tell  her,  Agnes ;  she  may  know  this  ere  you  lay  me  in  the  tomb- 
She  was  like  a  rainbow  on  them  when  the  clouds  in  heaven  loom. 

Yes,  the  darling  was  the  rainbow  which  our  love  had  seemed  to  send 
As  the  token  of  a  promise  that  the  tempest  now  should  end 
And  along  whose  span  our  spirits  should  together  run  and  blend. 

With  the  babe  upon  my  bosom,  though  I  would  not  pardon  crave,    " 
Yet  the  wrongs  my  words  had  done  him,  0 !  I  knew  he  all  forgave ; 
But  I  doubt  if  he  forgets  them  in  the  all-forgetful  grave. 

While  his  hungry  fond  eyes  uttered  more  than  human  lips  could  say, 
Still  I  saw  his  lips  were  longing,  if  he  dared,  to  give  away 
All  his  soul  to  me  in  converse  that  sweet  morning  in  the  May. 

And  he  dared  not !  God  of  heaven,  that  I  was  so  hard  and  cold ! 
That,  so  near  his  dear  babe  pressing,  him  so  far  off  I  should  hold ! 
With  my  face  all  steel  against  him,  while  my  heart  for  him  was  gold ! 


Yes,  dear  keeper,  it  was  madness  ;  in  your  eyes  I  read  the  thought  : 
It  would  be  a  thing  expected  that  a  spirit  so  distraught 
And  distorted  out  of  nature  should  at  last  be  hither  brought. 

Peace  for  us  was  truce  of  passion.    O'er  a  deep  of  hopes  and  fears, 
On  a  thin  glare  ice  of  silence  we  had  glided  through  the  years 
Of  the  infancy  of  Zilpah—  then  the  world  sank  drowned  in  tears  ! 


ft 

He  h'is  whole  heart  lavished  on  her  ;  and  she  grew  to  love  him  so, 
By  companionship  and  heirship  so  his  own  she  seemed  to  grow, 
That  I  feared  to  her  his  largeness  all  my  littleness  would  show. 


So  I  grudged  him  her  caresses  ;  though  his  face,  grown  pale  and  thin, 
Should  have  pleaded  me  the  hunger  that  his  heart  had  famished  in, 
On  his  cheek  the  hectic  telling  how  life-deep  the  pang  had  been. 

Then,  at  last,  I  madly  charged  him  with  contriving  to  displace 
Mother  in  her  child's  aifection  —  Lamb  of  God  !    is,  is  there  grace  ?  — 
Shocked  he  turned  a  sad  look  on  me,  and  —  I  struck  him  in  the  face  ! 


Hah!  blood  on  his  lips!  '0  husband!  darling!  darling!'    My  wild  shriek 
Brought  in  Zilpah  running  breathless ;  in  our  arms  he,  deadly  weak, 
Sank  with  us,  I  wailing,  crying,  '  O  my  husband !  do  not  speak ! ' 

Through  his  parted  lips  came  streaming  the  red  torrent  of  his  life, 

With  the  struggling,  drowning  last  words,  'Love  me — daughter,  dear — dear  wife ! 

Words  that  struck  my  brain  and  killed  it,  like  the  stabbing  of  a  knife. 

Out  of  earth  I  seemed  whirled  upward  to  the  dead  and  frozen  moon  ; 
From  the  far-off  world  rose  Zilpah's  weird,  low,  sobbing,  dying  croon: 
'0.  so  hard!  hard!  so  hard,  father !  so  hard,  darling!  and  so  soon!' 

Then  befell  the  blessed  darkness;  darkness  with  no  ray  of  light; 

Sun,  nor  moon,  nor  star  of  memory:  keeper,  how  long  was  the  night? — 

No,  not  *  five ' ;  for,  two  years  surely,  I  the  days  remember  right. 

Seven  hundred  three  and  forty — I  have  counted  them  all  through — 

Days  or  dreams — I  counted,  Agnes ;  I  had  nothing  else  to  do 

Through  the  long  nights,  adding,  waiting  if  the  same  dream  would  come  true. 


Dreams  they  were,  at  first,  of  Zilpah ;  changed  from  dreams  to  days  at  last 
What !  '  all  days  of  all  the  five  years  Zilpah  here  with  me  has  passed '  ? 

0  my  darling !  can  death  bear  it  from  such  love  to  be  outcast  ? 

What ! '  you  have  an  opened  letter,  writ  to  Zilpah  by  his  hand ! 

Left  for  me  to  read  if  ever  I  should  come  to  understand 

In  her  absence' !    Eead  it,  Agnes,  though  it  me  with  murder  brand ! 

HIS  LETTEE 

'  Darling  little  daughter  Zilpah  :  Now  let  not  your  dear  heart  bleed ! 
Think  of  me  at  peace  and  happy  when  these  lines  you  come  to  read ; 
Think  how  you  were  all  my  solace ;  think  of  mother  in  her  need. 

1  She  will  feel  the  shock  more  deeply ,  since,  you  know,  we  have  not  darec 
Tell  her  of  these  fatal  bleedings,  and  she  will  not  be  prepared ; 

9 

So  her  pain  will  be  the  greater  by  the  pain  our  love  has  spared. 

'  You,  my  Zilpah,  you  expect  it ;  and  I  catch  your  anxious  eye 
Always  following  your  father ;  even  now  you  hover  nigh 
Where  this  letter  I  sit  writing,  to  be  read  not  till  I  die. 


o-  55 


1  When  the  last  comes,  you  will  bravely  for  sweet  mother's  sake  upbear ; 
I  foresee  how  she  will  need  you — if  she  die — or  when  or  where — 

Fail  not  thou  to  lay  her  by  me ' 

Agnes,  lift  me !  air,  more  air ! 

Dying — but  the  letter !    Keeper,  help  me  live  to  hear  it  all ! 
Higher — so !     Now  read  on ! — Hold  me ! — no,  no,  Agnes,  let  me  fall ! 
Zilpah! — Husband! — in  the  darkness!  groping,  groping  to — your — call! 


RAIN    ON    THE    ROOF 


When  the  humid  shadows  hover 

Over  all  the  starry  spheres 
And  the  melancholy  darkness 

Gently  weeps  in  rainy  tears, 
What  a  bliss  to  press  the  pillow 

Of  a  cottage-chamber  bed 
And  lie  listening  to  the  patter 

Of  the  soft  rain  overhead ! 

Every  tinkle  on  the  shingles 
Has  an  echo  in  the  heart; 

And  a  thousand  dreamy  fancies 
Into  busy  being  start, 


57 


And  a  thousand  recollections 

Weave  their  air-threads  into  woof, 

As  I  listen  to  the  patter 
Of  the  raiii  upon  the  roof. 

Now  in  memory  comes  my  mother, 

As  she  used  in  years  agone, 
To  regard  the  darling  dreamers 

Ere  she  left  them  till  the  dawn: 
O !  I  feel  her  fond  look  on  me 

As  I  list  to  this  refrain 
Which  is  played  upon  the  shingles 

By  the  patter  of  the  rain. 

Then  my  little  seraph-sister, 

With  the  wings  and  waving  hair, 
And  her  star-eyed  cherub-brother — 

A  serene  angelic  pair — 
Glide  around  my  wakeful  pillow, 

With  their  praise  or  mild  reproof, 
As  I  listen  to  the  murmur 

Of  the  soft  rain  on  the  roof. 


And  another  comes,  to  thrill  me 

With  her  eyes'  delicious  blue; 
And  I  mind  not,  musing  on  her, 

That  her  heart  was  all  untrue: 
I  remember  but  to  love  her 

With-  a  passion  kin  to  pain, 
And  my  heart's  quick  pulses  quiver 

To  the  patter  of  the  rain. 

Art  hath  naught  of  tone  or  cadence 

That  can  work  with  such  a  spell 
In  the  soul's  mysterious  fountains, 

Whence  the  tears  of  rapture  well, 
As  that  melody  of  Nature, 

That  subdued,  subduing  strain 
Which  is  played  upon  the  shingles 

By  the  patter  of  the  rain. 

1849. 


THE    END    OF    THE    RAINBOW 

There  is  a  rare  region 
Whose  heavenward  scope 

Holds  legion  on  legion 
Of  angels  of  hope — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


Endure  the  dull  present, 
Its  toil,  moil,  and  sorrow ! 

We  shall  all  find  that  pleasant 
Elysium  tomorrow — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


There  the  sky  never  varies 

From  glory  to  gloom ; 
There  groves  and  green  prairies 

Eternally  bloom — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


The  bees  hive  no  honey 

In  that  happy  land; 
For  the  days  are  all  sunny, 

The  air  always  bland, 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


There  Hope  climbs  the  mountains 

And  rests  in  the  sky; 
There  Peace  drinks  at  fountains 

That  never  go  dry — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


There  joys  above  measure 

Are  blisses  benign ; 
There  life's  ruby,  pleasure, 

Melts  into  sweet  wine— 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


There  Love  from  its  madness 

Of  longing  and  moan 
Leaps  whole  in  the  gladness 

Of  finding  its  own — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


No  shadow  Cimmerian 

Of  ignorance  there ; 
But  full  the  Pierian 

Spring  jets  in  the  air — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


There  glitter  the  riches 

That  time  never  rusts; 
There  glory's  proud  niches 

Are  filled  with  our  busts— 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


Endure  the  dull  present, 
Its  toil,  moil,  and  sorrow; 

We  shall  all  find  the  pleasant 
Elysium  tomorrow — 

At  the  end  of  the  rainbow. 


THE    HEROES    OF    THE    PEN 

In  the  old  time  gone,  ere  came  the  dawn 

To  the  ages  dark  and  dim, 
Who  wielded  the  sword  with  mightiest  brawn 

The  world  bowed  down  to  him ; 
The  hand  most  red  with  the  slaughtered  dead 

Most  potent  waved  command, 
And  Mars  from  the  sky  of  glory  shed 

His  light  like  a  blazing  brand. 
But  fiery  Mars  among  the  stars 

Grew  pale  and  paler  when, 
At  the  morn,  came  Venus  ushering  in 

The  Heroes  of  the  Pen. 


tti 


Not  with  sword  and  flame  these  heroes  came, 

To  ravage  and  to  slay, 
But  the  savage  soul  with  thought  to  tame 

And  with  love  and  reason  sway ; 
Nor  good  steel  wrought  that  battles  fought 

In  the  centuries  of  yore 
Was  ever  so  bright  as  they  burnished  thought 

To  cut  into  error's  core; 
And  in  the  fight  for  truth  and  right 

Not  a  hundred  thousand  men 
Of  the  heroes  old  were  match  for  one 

Of  the  Heroes  of  the  Pen. 

For  the  weapon  they  wield  nor  armor  nor  shield 

Endures  for  a  single  dint, 
Nor  glave  withstands,  nor  bayonet  steeled, 

Nor  powder  and  ball  and  flint. 
It  touches  the  thing  called  Slave  or  King, 

And  the  Man  doth  reappear, 


As  did  from  the  toad  the  seraph  spring 
At  the  touch  of  Ithuriel's  spear ; 

And  wherever  down  it  strikes  a  crown, 
Says  sovereign  to  serf,  'Amen ! ' 

'Amen  and  hurra/  the  people  cry, 
'For  the  Heroes  of  the  Pen!' 

Hurra  for  the  true,  of  old  or  new, 
Who  heroes  lived  or  fell ! 

Thermopylae's  immortal  few ! 
Hurra  for  the  Switzer  Tell! 

Upvoice  to  sky  the  brave  Gracchi! 
Hurra  for  the  Pole  and  the  Hun! 

For  the  men  who  made  the  Great  July! 
Hurra  for  Washington ! 

Yet  old  Time-Past  would  triumph  at  last- 
But  hurra,  and  hurra  again, 

For  the  heroes  who  triumph  over  Time, 
The  Heroes  of  the  Pen ! 


INNERVALE 


At  the  base  of  a  marvelous  mountain, 
Whose  hights  human  foot  never  trod, 

There  gushes  a  crystalline  fountain 
And  makes  a  bright  brook  in  the  sod. 


And  the  sod  greens  away  o'er  a  valley 
That  opens  where  blue  waters  be; 

And  the  brook  with  meandering  dally 
Goes  babbling  along  to  the  sea. 


There,  snowy  sails  pass  like  the  lazy 
White  clouds  of  a  summer-blue  sky — 

Appear  and  evanish  where  hazy 
Infinity  fences  the  eye. 


Here,  asleep  upon  Pan's  mossy  pillows — 
By  Pan  piped  asleep  in  these  groves, — 

Dreaming  Poesy  hears  the  low  billows 
Breeze-babbled  from  echoing  coves. 


And  here,  while  the  leaves  sift  the  sunny 
Swift  sands  of  the  day  from  above, 

The  wild  bee  gads  hunting  for  honey, 
With  wings  wove  of  whispers  of  love. 


Here  the  ripples  make  music  like  olden 
Weird  monotones  thrummed  on  a  lute; 

Here  the  dark  skies  of  green  are  starred  golden 
With  thick  constellations  of  fruit. 


In  this  valley,  alone  but  not  lonely, 
Beside  where  the  brook-waters  run, 

Stands  one  little  cottage,  one  only, 
Dwells  one  little  maid,  only  one. 


Her  blue  eyes  are  clear  pools  of  passion, 
Her  lips  have  the  tremor  of  leaves, 

And  the  speech  that  her  loving  thoughts  fashion 
Is  sweeter  than  poetry  weaves. 


Flirtation,  gross,  flippant,  and  cruel, 
Ne'er  held  in  its  tarnishing  hold 

The  troth  that  in  her  is  a  jewel 
For  only  love's  setting  of  gold. 


Though  the  vale  is  by  sleep  so  surrounded 
That  her  ne'er  a  wooer  shall  win, 

On  the  side  by  the  sea  of  dreams  bounded 
With  her  I  sail  out  and  sail  in. 


EMMA    STUART 

O,  the  voices  of  the  crickets, 

Chirping  sad  along  the  lea, 
Seem  the  very  tears  of  music 

Wept  in  vain  despair  for  me; 
And  the  katydids'  responses 

From  among  the  locust-leaves 
Are  the  weak  and  wild  regrettings 

Of  far  other  autumn-eves. 

For  they  mind  me,  Emma  Stuart, 
Of  the  bygone  blessed  times 

When  our  heartbeats  paired  together 
Like  sweet  syllables  in  rhymes ; 


Ere  the  faith  of  love  was  broken — 
Ere  our  locked  hands  fell  apart 

And  the  vanity  of  promise 
Left  a  void  in  either  heart. 

Art  thou  happy,  Emma  Stuart? 

I  again  may  happy  be 
Nevermore:  the  insects  crying 

In  the  grass  and  on  the  tree, 
As  if  singing  songs  of  sorrow 

At  the  coming  of  the  frost, 
Are  to  me  love's  fallen  angels 

Wailing  for  their  heaven  lost. 

Often,  often,  Emma  Stuart, 

On  such  solemn  nights  as  this 
Have  we  sat  and  mused  together 

Of  the  perfectness  of  bliss— 
Of  the  hope  that  lit  the  darkness 

Of  the  future  with  its  ray, 
Shining  like  a  star  in  heaven, 

Beautiful,  but  far  away! 


By  the  gateway,  where  the  maple 

Of  the  moonlight  made  eclipse 
And  the  river-ripple  sounded 

Like  the  murmur  of  fond  lips, 
There  a  little  maiden  waited, 

Telling  all  the  moments  o'er — 
Emma  Stuart!  Emma  Stuart! 

Waits  the  maiden  there  no  more? 

No,  ah,  no !     Along  the  pathway 

Grows  the  high  untrampled  grass, 
Where  the  cricket  stops  to  listen 

For  thy  wonted  feet  to  pass ; 
But  thy  footsteps,  Emma  Stuart, 

Press  no  more  the  doorway-stone, 
Trip  no  more  along  the  pathway — 

And  the  cricket  sings  alone! 


A    SONG    FOR    THE    CRATS 

There  is  hope  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube, 

There  is  hope  in  the  grand  tintamar 
Of  cannon,  and  music,  and  clangor 

Where  Sultan  encounters  with  Czar; 
There  is  hope  where  the  sway  of  the  Tartar 

Is  swept  down  the  bloody  Hoang; 
There  is  hope  for  the  Isles  of  the  Morning 

In  Liberty's  bugle-twang : 

'Down,  down  with  the  Autocrat! 
Hurra  for  the  Democrat ! ' 

Is  Liberty's  bugle-twang. 


77 


The  blood  that  has  flowed  from  old  heroes 

And  settled  in  Lord,  Prince,  or  Don 
Shall  *be  fetched  to  the  level  of  manhood 

As  the  current  of  Freedom  rolls  on ; 
For  the  world  groweth  weary  of  nobles, 

Who  mourn  when  the  people  rejoice, 
Rejoice  when  the  people  are  mourning, 

And  shudder  at  Liberty's  voice : 
'Down,  down  with  the  Aristocrat! 
Hurra  for  the  Democrat ! ' 

Is  Liberty's  righteous  voice. 


Yet  it  were  but  a  change  of  oppressors 
To  fly  from  Blue  Blood  to  the  Burse— 

From  the  Aristocrat's  power  of  birthright 
To  the  Plutocrat's  power  of  purse; 

But  all,  they  shall  all  be  down-stricken ! 
The  thunder  is  in  the  sky; 


It  waits  but  for  Truth's  invocation, 
It  waits  but  for  Liberty's  cry: 

'Down,  down  with  the  Plutocrat! 

Hurra  for  the  Democrat ! ' 
And  this  shall  be  Liberty's  cry. 


The  Autocrat  rushes  to  ruin, 

The  Aristocrat  waxes  old, 
And  mind,  in  Democracy's  balance, 

Shall  weigh  down  the  Plutocrat's  gold. 
In  the  turmoil  of  mad  revolutions — 

Mobocracy's  chaos  of  wrong — 
A  firm  world  of  order  is  forming, 

That  shall  to  fair  Freedom  belong  : 
Down,  down  with  the  Mobocrat! 
Hurra  for  the  Democrat! 

And  the  world  shall  to  Freedom  belong! 


1852. 


ASPIRATION    AND    INSPIRATION 


We  weary  waiting  for  these  glimmerings 
Which  struggle  singly  through  the  difficult  rifts 
Of  aspiration  from  the  overworld. 
O  for  some  breezy  circumstance  at  once 
To  take  the  cloud  off  from  our  starry  thoughts 
And  let  their  glory  constellate  the  dark ! 
The  spirit's  brightest  outgrowths  are  of  pain, 
As  precious  pearls  are  of  disease  in  shells 
At  bottom  of  the  deep.     The  slow,  obscure, 
Still  process  of  the  rain,  distilling  down 
The  great  sweat  of  the  sea,  is  never  seen 
In  the  consummate  spectacle  flashed  forth 
A  seven-hued  arch  upon  the  cloud  of  heaven : 


So  never  sees  the  world  those  energies, 

Stern  effort  and  long  patience,  which  have  stirred 

In  toil's  humility  and  slowly  heaved 

Its  darkness  up,  till  sudden  glory  springs 

Forth  on  it,  showing  like  the  spanning  rainbow. 

Think  ye  the  lofty  foreheads  of  the  world, 
Which  shine  as  full  moons  through  the  night  of  time, 
Holding  their  calm  big  splendor  steadily 
Forever  at  the  top  of  history, 
Think  ye  they  rushed  up  with  the  suddenness 
Of  rockets  aimlessly  shot  into  heaven, 
And  flared  to  their  eternal  places  there? 
The  vulgar  years  through  which  ambition  gropes, 
Reaching  and  feeling  for  its  destiny, 
Are  only  years  of  chaos,  tallied  not 
On  the  memorial  rocks,  but  covered  deep 
Under  the  stratified  history  of  a  world. 

Celebrity  by  some  great  accident, 
Some  single  opportunity,  is  like 
Aladdin's  palace  in  the  Arabian  tale, 
Vanished  when  envy  steals  the  wizard's  charm. 
But  thought  up-pyramids  itself  to  fame 


S3 


By  husbandry  of  opportunities, 
Grade  upon  grade  constructing,  till  its  hight, 
Descried  above  time's  far  horizon,  slopes 
With  peak  among  the  stars.     Go  mummify 
Thy  name  within  that  architectural  pile 
Another's  intellect  has  builded ;  none — 
For  all  the  hieroglyphs  of  glory — none 
Save  but  the  builder's  name  shall  signify 
To  the  remembering  ages. 

Heart  and  brain 

Of  thine  need  resolutely  yoke  themselves 
To  slow-paced  years  of  toil — need  feel  and  think 
(A  bibulous  memory  sponging  up  the  thoughts 
Of  dead  men  is  not  thought) — else  all  the  trumps 
Of  hero-heraldry  that  ever  twanged, 
Gathered  in  one  mad  blare  above  the  graves, 
Shall  not  avail  to  resurrect  thy  name 
To  the  salvation  of  remembrance  then 
When  once  the  letters  of  it  have  slunk  back 
Into  the  alphabet  from  off  thy  tomb. 
Ay,  think  or  perish !     Marble  frets  and  crumbles 
Down  into  undistinguishable  dust 


At  last,  and  epitaphs  grooved  into  brass 

Yield  piecemeal  to  the  hungry  elements; 

But  thoughts  that  drop  plumb  to  the  depths  of  truth 

Anchor  the  name  forever  and  forever. 


VICTRICE 


We  walked  where  the  grass  was  a  checker 

Of  the  light  and  the  leaves  of  May, 
When  the  Night  in  her  white  shroud  of  moonshine 

Was  the  beautiful  ghost  of  Day. 


The  presence  that  thrilled  me  with  passion, 
There  under  the  moon  and  the  shade, 

Was  a  fond  being,  meek  in  her  beauty, 
Half  seraph  and  half  loving  maid. 


Her  voice  had  the  sorrowful  cadence 

Of  winds  of  the  night  in  the  pine ; 
And  her  soul,  like  the  mild  moon  of  heaven, 

Shone  forth  from  her  sad  eyes  to  mine. 

85 


86o 


We  had  come  unto  where  the  world  ended; 

For  out  of  the  being  of  men 
And  into  the  bliss  of  angels 

We  had  died  and  were  born  again. 


Deep  we  drank  of  love's  river  Lethean, 
Till  the  moon  in  the  west  grew  white 

And  along  the  gray  shore  of  morning 
Broke  the  first  purple  billows  of  light. 


As  the  inswelling  floodtide  of  sunrise 
Rose  over  pale  Lucifer's  gleam, 

She  saw  in  the  drowned  star  the  symbol 
Of  the  end  of  our  earthly  dream. 


She  knew — and,  O  God!  to  remember 
How  she  told  me  this  with  her  eyes! — 

That  she  never  again  should  behold  me 
Till  she  met  my  soul  in  the  skies. 


O  the  pain  and  the  passion  of  parting ! 

For  she  knew  that  I  needs  must  go, 
Nor  return  till  the  year  were  dying 

And  she  lying  under  the  snow. 


O  the  pang  and  the  anguish  of  parting ! 

When  she  saw,  and  I  could  not  see, 
Saw  the  seraphim  signaling  to  her, 

And  her  woman's-love  hid  it  from  me. 


She  loved  me  too  dearly  to  slay  me 
With  the  tidings  her  heart  had  heard ; 

And  sadly  she  blessed  me  and  kissed  me, 
But  said  me  no  saddening  word. 


Sainted  martyr  of  passion  and  victrice ! 

How  to  memory  now  thou  showst, 
In  love  like  the  dying  Redeemer, 

In  peace  like  the  Holy  Ghost! 


Didst  thou  hope  I  could  bear  it  the  better, 
Not  to  see  thy  beauty  decline — 

Not  to  have  the  gall  and  wormwood 
Of  memory  mixed  with  the  wine? 


Bear  it  better !  sweet  sister  of  Jesus ! 

When  the  sorrow  of  all  the  race, 
The  sorrow  of  loving  and  dying, 

I  remember  was  in  thy  face! 


O  the  shock,  and  the  fever  and  madness! 

When  my  soul,  into  darkness  withdrawn, 
Felt  only  those  eyes  in  the  moonlight, 

Saw  only  that  face  in  the  dawn! 


But  I  came  back  to  life  and  endured  it; 

I  said,  I  will  bear  my  breath: 
Surely,  I  should  bear  love  and  remembrance, 

Since  she  has  borne  love  and  death. 


DISCONTENT 

A  little  bird  with  a  scarlet  coat 
Came  fluting  to  me  a  silvery  note, 
As  though  it  said  through  its  mellow  throat, 
Isle-of- Willows !  Isle-of-Willows ! 


It  perched  alone  on  a  lonely  tree, 
And  seemed  that  it  longed  and  longed  to  be 
In  the  isle  it  sung  of  thus  to  me, 
Isle-of-Willows!  Isle-of-Willows! 


It  thought  perhaps  of  a  little  isle 
Where  blue  the  waters  and  heavens  smile 
And  green  the  willows  wave  all  the  while — 
Isle  of  Willows!  Isle  of  Willows! 


90 


Is  this  thy  memory  or  thy  hope — 
Thy  being's  backward  or  forward  scope, 
Whereto  thy  little  heart-longings  grope  ?- 
Isle-of-WiUows !  Isle-of-Willows ! 


It  said  me  never  another  word, 
But  flitted  away,  this  little  bird; 
Yet  aye  in  my  soul  its  voice  is  heard — 
Isle-of-Willows!  Isle-of-Willows! 


THRENODY 


A  gap  is  in  our  fireside-ring 
The  wideness  of  a  tiny  tomb; 

A  prattle  sweet  as  birds  can  sing 
Has  left  its  hush  in  every  room. 


Our  hearts  long  for  the  pretty  charms 
Of  babish  questions  manifold, 

And  for  the  little  hugging  arms 
Now  locked  across  a  bosom  cold. 


The  bright  hair  and  the  eyes  that  beamed 
So  wondrously,  O,  how  we  miss! 

And,  O,  the  loving  lips!  that  seemed 
Fashioned  so  purposely  to  kiss. 


As  they  who,  yearning  over  sea, 

Grow  homesick  for  their  land  and  kin, 

So  we  grow  heaven-sick  to  be 
In  that  far  laud  our  love  is  in. 


THE    HAUNTING    VOICE 

The  voice  of  a  woman  forever 

Runs  sobbing  after  my  soul ; 
Night  or  day,  day  or  night,  I  can  never 

Escape  its  mournful  control; 

Its  moaning  musical  dole 
Pursues  me  for  ever  and  ever. 

It  comes  to  my  memory  mingling 
With  words  it  uttered  of  yore, 

When  its  tones  through  my  pulses  went  tingling 
With  thrills  felt  never  before — 
With  thrills  felt  now  nevermore, 

Not  even  in  home's  holy  mingling. 


Says  the  sorrowful  voice,  'O!  my  darling, 

Did  love  that  being  endow 
Whose  prattle  outcarols  the  starling 

And  makes  home  happier  now? 

You  took  the  marital  vow, 
And  you  gave  me  to  die,  O,  my  darling!' 

So  forever  this  voice  of  a  woman 

Cries  desolately  to  me — 
This  voice  as  really  human 

As  voice  of  human  can  be! 

No  matter  whither  I  flee, 
Still  I  hear  this  voice  of  a  woman. 

Down  to  death  and  the  sepulcher's  portal 
This  voice  shall  follow  my  sin — 

O,  what  if  the  voice  is  immortal, 
And,  where  hope's  blisses  begin, 
Shall  come  and  welcome  me  in 

With  joy  through  the  heavenly  portal! 


1866. 


CONSUMMATION 

Death  had  sunk  the  world  from  under  my  feet; 

Love  had  given  thee  wings  to  fly; 
And  we  met  as  the  dawn  and  the  darkness  meet — 

Thou  the  dawn,  and  the  darkness  I. 


My  soul  was  a  gloom  that  had  blotted  heaven; 

And  thine  was  a  fine  ascending  fire 
That  streamed  it  through  with  a  luminous  leaven 

Of  hope  of  morning  and  day's  desire. 


Love  wrought  the  miracle  of  raising  the  dead: 
Though  on  the  tomb  the  seal  had  been  put, 

Thine  eyes  to  my  buried  passion  said, 

'Come  forth!'  and  it  came,  bound  hand  and  foot. 

95 


Sad  memory  drowned  itself  in  those  eyes — 
Fell  into  their  liquid  deeps  and  sunk ; 

And  the  darkness  of  all  the  earth  and  skies 
To  those  two  crystals  of  darkness  shrunk. 


When  we  met  our  fate — rememberst  the  place  ?- 
My  day  was  barren,  my  dream  was  done; 

But  the  bright  warm  flush  of  thy  radiant  face 
On  my  frozen  heart  flamed  like  a  sun. 


That  look!  it  created  the  world  anew: 
Thy  presence  came  to  me  like  the  sweep 

Of  a  full  white  sail  to  the  sudden  view 
Of  a  shipwrecked  man  on  the  deep. 


I  knew  I  was  saved;  I  knew  that  thy  voice 
Should  sing  the  cries  in  the  night  to  peace; 

But  I  felt  it  almost  a  guilt  to  rejoice 
That  love  from  the  dead  had  love's  release. 


97 


Thou  hadst  never  suffered,  and  couldst  not  know 
How  past  and  present  in  me  were  whirled — 

How  the  breeze  out  of  sunrise  seemed  to  blow 
From  the  sundown  of  the  underworld. 


But  love  is  a  god,  and  to  him  one  day 
Is  a  thousand  years  that  are  past: 

I  woke  from  the  dreams  that  had  flown  away, 
And,  behold,  they  were  true  at  last. 


It  seemed  we  had  dwelt  in  the  Morningstar 
Ere  the  soul  of  either  was  born ; 

And  I  saw  thy  face  in  glimmerings  far 
Of  memory's  earliest  morn. 


The  barefooted  little  damsel  that  played 
With  me  in  the  plash  on  the  marge 

Of  the  blue  Ke-u-ka  was  flashed  and  rayed 
In  the  beam  of  this  love  so  large. 


Thy  passionate  voice,  so  sweetly  that  robbed 
My  soul  of  its  will  and  made  it  slave, 

Was  the  girl  Fanny  Wolcott's  when  she  sobbed 
My  heart  from  me  at  her  father's  grave. 


The  victorious  eyes  that  once  I  had  met 
And  mistaken  for  heavenly  blue 

Were  dark  as  that  night  I  remember  yet, 
Because  they  were  thine  and  were  true. 


Thou  seemed  the  soul  after  death  from  the  eve 
When  we  strolled  Miami's  green  shore 

And  heard  the  cricket  and  katydid  grieve 
That  with  them  we  should  tryst  no  more. 


The  two  strong  loves  that  had  fought  for  my  heart 
And  at  last  laid  them  down  and  smiled 

To  divide  and  rend  it  to  graves  apart 
Arose  in  thee  and  were  reconciled. 


99 -> 


From  kiss  on  the  sweet  sad  face  in  the  night, 
From  tears  for  the  night-wind's  human  moan, 

O!  the  waking  to  find,  in  love's  new  light, 
All  faces,  all  voices  thy  own! 


1883. 


THE  SHEPHERDS  OF  THE  ADVENT 

The  tents  of  shepherds  and  their  fleecy  flocks 
Whitecapt  the  billowy  summits  of  the  hills 
Of  Judah  underneath  the  starlight.     Night, 
That  solemn  sorceress  whose  witchery 
Conjures  to  view  the  mysteries  of  God, 
Still  Night  went  westering  over  Israel, 
And  Dead  Sea,  Jordan,  and  Lake  Galilee, 
Bethesda,  and  the  Pools  of  Solomon 
Glowed  with  her  starry  glory  in  their  breast, 
Worshipful  lovers  of  a  passing  queen. 
The  breezes  whispered  softly  in  the  palms, 
Seeming  to  breathe  portentous  revelations 
In  the  strange  language  of  the  spirit-world. 


101 


102 


The  brooks  ran  sobbing  through  the  vales,  low  sobs, 

As  if  of  angels  stifling  grief  for  man 

In  the  great  hope  of  his  redemption  nigh. 

Bethlehem  lay  asleep.     The  starlight  fell 

And  splintered  on  her  housetops.     She  dreamed  not 

Of  Heaven's  preparation  for  her  grandeur. 

The  shepherds  watched  their  flocks.     Upon  the  hights 
There  of  the  lonely  hills,  there  in  the  night, 
Where  uttered  patriotism  was  not  treason 
Against  the  Empire — where  the  Brazen  Eagles 
Had  never  come  asserting  Kome  and  Caesar — 
There  sat  the  shepherds,  talking  of  the  past, 
The  proud  old  times  of  Hebrew  history; 
Of  Father  Abraham,  who  trusted  God 
As  trusts  the  little  child  its  mother's  love; 
Of  that  Nile-cradled  hero,  him  whose  arm 
Wielded  the  almightiness  of  great  Jehovah; 
Of  Miriam,  sweet  singer  of  the  host 
Of  Israel,  harping  praises  by  the  sea 
Of  triumph ;  of  his  voice  that  so  prevailed 
In  heaven  as  to  stop  the  moving  sun 
In  middle  firmament  and  stay  the  moon 


o  103 


In  Ajalon  a  day ;  of  that  brave  lad, 

The  son  of  Jesse,  whose  right  arm  God  nerved 

To  smite  the  boastful  huge  Philistine  dead 

With  but  a  pebble ;  of  the  heroes  all, 

And  bards,  and  seers,  and  kings — bright  names  that  starred 

Their  annals  thick  with  glory ;  and,  at  last, 

Of  that  great  name  not  risen  yet,  but  soon 

To  rise  the  sun  of  all  their  history ; — 

'And  he  shall  strike  our  shackles  off,  and  chase 

'The  Latin  legions  back,  and  fling  from  us 

'  The  tyranny  of  this  Augustus  Caesar ! 

'And  he  shall  come  in  triumph' — 

Hah !  a  glare 

As  all  the  stars  were  gathered  to  one  blaze 
And  flashed  down  on  the  hills!  a  rush  of  wings! 
And  instant  there  before  the  shepherds  stood 
An  angel  of  the  Lord.     A  great  fear  smote 
Their  souls.     They  knew  not  but  it  was  the  dread 
Last  day  and  Israel  was  summoned  first 
To  fiery  judgment,  as  most  favored,  and 
Most  sinful.     But,  with  quick  voice,  like  a  harp 
Struck  suddenly,  the  angel  reassured 


104 


Their  hearts,  delivering  the  great  Glad-Tidings; 

And  'Halleluiah!  halleluiah!  peace 

On  earth,  good  will  to  men!'  burst  forth  at  once 

With  apparition  of  majestic  angels, 

That  now,  clad  in  the  uniform  of  glory, 

Kevealed  their  splendors  like  a  lightning-flash 

Of  rainbows,  up,  rank  over  rank,  until 

The  narrowing  vista  of  their  radiant  lines 

Seemed  closed  upon  the  very  throne  of  God ; 

And  'Halleluiah!  halleluiah  I'  pealed 

With  all  their  voices,  wonderfully  loud — 

Loud  as  a  roar  of  mountain-thunderbolts, 

Yet  sweeter  than  a  silvery  symphony 

Of  quiring  flutes  at  midnight  on  the  sea. 

Quick  as  a  change  in  dreams  the  vault  was  vacant 
Again  of  all  except  the  stars.     The  shepherds 
Leapt  from  their  kneeling.     Heaven  beckoned  them 
To  Bethlehem.     They  followed,  groping  through 
Their  tears  of  joy ;  and  where  the  star  sank  low 
And  stopt  they  found  the  mother  and  the  babe. 

1859. 


IMMORTALITY 


How  many  of  the  bright  names  now  that  seem 
In  fame's  high  heaven  fixed  eternal  spheres 

Shall  hold  their  faint  reflections  in  the  stream 
Of  memory  ten  hundred  thousand  years? 


Who  knows  but  we  are  in  the  night  and  yet 

There  is  a  universal  sun  to  rise, 
When  all  these  twinkling  stars  of  fame  shall  set, 

Or  fade  into  the  nothingness  of  skies? 


Mankind  may  climb  the  pyramid  of  soul, 
Up  by  the  stairflight  of  the  centuries, 

So  high  that  they  shall  hear  the  anthems  roll 
Of  seraphim,  and  see  where  heaven  is. 

105 


106 


And  then  the  loud  huzzas  of  these  low  times, 

That  send  up  great  names,  may  not  strike  their  ears, 

Enraptured  with  the  fugues  of  upper  climes 
And  with  the  silent  music  of  the  spheres. 


The  highest  peaks  of  glory  now  that  rise 
May  yet  be  whelmed  rocks  in  that  spirit-sea 

On  whose  floodtide  upfloating  toward  the  skies 
The  ark  of  raised  humanity  shall  be. 


Names,  voices,  die;  ay,  letters  that  enshrine 
Their  corses  have  at  last  their  burial-day; 

But  thoughts,  which  are  their  spirits,  hold  divine 
Existence,  and  shall  never  pass  away. 


No  drop  of  thought  once  mingled  with  the 
Of  soul  shall  perish,  though  it  disappear ; 

The  vapor  into  which  it  dies  may  be 
Born  into  rainbow  in  some  other  year. 


Or,  rising  in  its  darkness,  it  may  swell 
Some  thundercloud  of  passion  yet  to  loom; 

For  thought,  of  heaven  born  or  born  of  hell, 
Doubles  itself  for  aye  in  gleam  or  gloom. 


FREEDMEN'S    BATTLE-HYMN 

O,  to  the  Lord  be  glory!  halleluiah  to  the  Lord! 
He  hath  stricken  off  our  shackles  and  hath  given  us  the  sword 
To  do  the  righteous  judgment  of  his  everlasting  Word, 
As  we  go  marching  on. 
Glory,  glory  Halleluiah! 

We  had  waited  for  his  token  of  deliverance  so  long 
That  we  feared  he  had  forgotten  our  two  hundred  years  of  wrong; 
But  at  last  we  hear  his  signal  in  the  battle-bugle's  song, 
And  we  go  marching  on. 

Ho!  fathers,  brothers,  slaving  in  the  cotton  and  the  corn! 
O !  wives  and  daughters  wishing  that  ye  never  had  been  born ! 
We  are  your  armed  redeemers,  and  we  lead  the  hope-forlorn, 
As  we  go  marching  on. 


For  God  hath  made  this  people  by  the  light  of  battle  see 
That  death  is  on  the  Nation  if  the  bond  do  not  go  free — 
That  by  the  sword  of  Freedmen  shall  the  land  regenerate  be; 
And  we  go  marching  on. 

Then  watch  and  pray,  dear  kindred ! — when  ye  hear  the  battle-cry- 
Look  for  Freedom's  Dark  Crusaders  where  the  Union-banners  fly, 
And  to  the  Lord  give  glory !  for  his  kingdom  cometh  nigh, 
As  we  go  marching  on. 
Glory,  glory  halleluiah! 

1863. 


DUTY    HERE    AND    GLORY    THERE 

Darkness  that  my  heart  could  feel  of, 
Blackness  that  my  soul  could  swim  in, 
Drowned  in  me  the  living  spirit, 

Strength  to  hope  and  will  to  dare ; 
Murder-shrieks  that  shock  the  midnight, 
And  that  pierce,  and  pang,  and  sicken, 
Would  have  brought  me  grateful  respite 

From  that  death,  that  death  despair; 
When  a  preternatural  whisper — 
Words  that  sounded  not,  but  touched  me — 
Seemed  to  utter  through  me  to  me, 

'Duty  here  and  glory  there!* 


111 


Where?     My  soul  looked  round  and  questioned 
Boom  of  thunder-throated  cannon, 
Clash  of  steel,  and  clang  of  music 

Strove  in  vain  to  answer  where. 
Then  loud  senatorial  voices, 
Stormy  with  a  people's  passion, 
Swollen  with  a  nation's  power, 

Seemed  grand  answers  in  the  air. 
But  the  cannon,  and  the  clashing, 
And  the  music,  and  the  voices 
Never  echoed  to  that  whisper, 

'Duty  here  and  glory  there!7 

Showers  of  delicious  praises, 
Falling  on  the  panting  spirit 
Like  the  cooling  rains  of  summer, 
Cherishing  great  souls  that  bear 
Thought's  immortal  bloom  of  beauty, 
Wafting  round  the  world  the  fragrance 


Of  their  names — Ambition  questioned, 
'Worth  not  these  the  weary  wear, 

Through  a  lifelong  toil  and  patience, 

Wear  of  soul  and  wear  of  body?' 

No  response  in  that  felt  whisper, 
'Duty  here  and  glory  there!' 

Where?     My  soul  looked  up  and  questioned- 
Up  to  where  the  stars  were  burning 
In  the  grand  and  awful  temple 

Of  the  midnight — up  to  where 
Vision  stops  against  the  curtain 
Of  the  infinite,  but  spirit 
Puts  aside  the  vail  and  enters : 

It  is  there!  O,  it  is  there! 
Thrilled  the  whisper  through  my  being, 
'Duty  here  for  little  lifetimes, 
Glory  there  for  endless  ages — 

Duty  here  and  glory  there!' 


EPITHALAMIUM 

A  brook  and  a  river — 

A  crystalline  brook 

From  a  sybilline  nook 
And  a  silvery  river — 

Flow  into  a  lake, 

In  which  beautiful  lake 
Are  mirrored  all  bright  things  above 

The  brook  is  a  life, 

And  the  river  a  life, 
And  the  lake  is  the  Lake  of  Love. 


And  out  of  its  bosom 

A  stream  fills  and  flows 

And  oceanward  goes — 
From  out  the  lake's  bosom 

115 


One  stream  to  the  sea; 

And  this  infinite  sea, 
That  ever  mysteriously  rolls 

Against  Time's  either  shore, 

It  is  named  Evermore, 
And  the  stream  named  Espousal  of  Souls. 


So  the  two,  brook  and  river, 
From  the  Lake  of  Love  run ; 

Two  lives  from  the  Giver 
Giving  back  to  Him  one. 


When  two  lives,  so  wed,  from  single 

Into  double  being  flow- 
When  two  souls,  so  one,  commingle, 

In  their  hearts  this  truth  shall  grow; 
Love  is  more  than  starry  lusters 

Round  the  honeymoon  at  rise; 
Over  all  the  skies  it  clusters, 

East  and  west  and  middle  skies. 


THE    BROOK-SONG 

In  shadowy  nook, 
Where  the  green  leaves  grow, 

Flow,  beautiful  brook, 
From  thy  cool  fount  flow: 

Brook,  babble,  babble,  brook, 
Flow,  flow,  brook,  flow — 

Flow,  brook,  babble,  brook, 
From  thy  cool  fount  flow. 

How  the  foamy  flocks 
Of  thy  waters  go 

Along  the  rough  rocks 
In  a  steep  fleet  flow! 


117 


118 


Flocks,  follow,  follow  flocks, 
Flow,  flow,  brook,  flow — 

Flow,  flocks,  follow  flocks 
In  a  steep  fleet  flow. 

With  many  a  crook 
Through  the  vale  below, 

Where  the  elms  overlook 
And  the  wild  flowers  blow, 

Brook,  murmur,  murmur,  brook, 
Flow,  flow,  brook,  flow — 

Flow,  brook,  murmur,  brook, 
Where  the  wild  flowers  blow. 

Flow  on  to  the  sea, 

Silver  brook,  and  show 
Our  lives  how  they  flee 

To  the  Dead-Sea's  flow- 
Flee,  stilly,  fleetly  flee— 

Flow,  flow,  brook,  flow — 
Our  lives  how  they  flee 

To  the  Dead-Sea's  flow. 


BABY    FANNY 

Her  hair  was  a  cluster 
Of  glooms  and  of  gleams, 

And  her  eyes  had  the  luster 
That  stars  have  in  dreams. 


The  busiest  rover 
That  buzzes  and  sips 

Never  found  honeyed  clover 
Like  Fanny's  red  lips. 


Her  cheeks  were  ripe  peaches, 
Her  voice  was  a  bird's, 

Making  sweet  little  speeches 
Without  any  words. 


119 


So  near  the  dear  lisper 

To  heaven  was  kept 
That  the  angels  could  whisper 

To  her  as  she  slept. 


Too  near!  for  her  smiling, 
In  dreams  as  she  lay, 

Showed  they  were  beguiling 
Her  spirit  away. 


'Come,  heavenly  sister!' 
One  mild  angel  saith ; 

But  a  bolder  one  kissed  her — 
Bold  Angel  of  Death! 


THE    LAND    REDEEMED 

Not  always  shall  the  good  earth  be 

To  man's  use  under  ban ; 
The  land  shall  be  redeemed  at  last 

And  rendered  back  to  man: 
Then  each  shall  of  the  acres  hold 

Enough  to  make  him  free; 
None  shall  usurp  more  than  his  need, 

And  none  shall  landless  be. 

The  system  of  old  feudal  wrong 
That  makes  the  people  pay 

For  room  to  live  upon  the  earth 
Shall  fade  and  fall  away; 


->  122  o- 

The  name  of  landlord  shall  become 

A  mockery  and  scoff, 
As  rolls  the  tide  of  human  rights 

To  sweep  his  landmarks  off. 

For  man  shall  yet  perceive  the  truth — 

Through  old  tradition  dim — 
That  record,  scroll,  nor  parchment  writ 

Can  take  the  earth  from  him ; 
That  nature  makes  a  title-deed 

To  each  one  for  his  time 
In  his  own  want,  and  who  takes  more 

He  perpetrates  a  crime. 

This  living  truth  shall  flush  the  cheek 

Of  pale  Starvation  red, 
As  over  old  ancestral  parks 

The  pauper's  sheaves  are  spread; 
This  truth  shall  wrest  from  blood  and  birth 

The  scepter  and  the  crown, 
And,  leveling  the  Workers  up, 

The  Drones  shall  level  down. 


Then  prince  and  peasant  side  by  side 

Shall  strive,  with  heart  and  bruin, 
By  doing  highest  work  for  man 

The  highest  rank  to  gain ; 
For,  when  each  has  his  human  right 

Of  home  upon  the  soil, 
The  Worker  shall  be  prince  and  king — 

God's  Nobleman  of  Toil ! 

Glad  time  of  earth's  beatitude ! 

When  none  shall  hoard  or  steal, 
But  all  mankind  together  work 

For  universal  weal; 
When  war  no  more  shall  shock  the  land 

Or  thunder  on  the  sea, 
But  by  the  Golden  Rule  of  Christ 

All  wrongs  shall  righted  be. 


MY    LORD 


Ennobled?     O  Lord  Alfred  Tennyson!— 
Now  dare  the  curse,  dig  Shakspeare's  bones 
From  underneath  the  Stratford-stones 

And  with  a  lordship  prank  the  skeleton! 


Men  well  may  jeer  and  ask  how  thou  hast  gained 
The  right  to  have  thy  race  renewed 
And  thy  old  Saxon  red  blood  blued 

By  royal  warrant,  clarified,  and  strained. 


What  hast  thou  done  that  goes  to  make  a  lord? 
The  greatness  by  estate-in-tail 
Which  Nature  gives  the  first-born  male 

Thou  canst  not  claim  as  Art's  reward. 

125 


Is  not  true  greatness,  like  the  poet,  born? 

Nobility  of  pedigree 

May  well  by  birthright  look  on  thee 
With  half  a  dozen  centuries  of  scorn. 


Where  are  thy  old  manorial  parks  and  halls, 
A  king's  gift  to  a  courtier's  smile, 
Or  loot  of  French  braves  when  the  Isle 

Was  theirs  and  Englishmen  were  churls  and  thralls? 


Where  is  the  half-mile's  length  of  corridor 
Lined  each  side  with  thy  pictured  row 
Of  ancestors,  whose  grand  airs  show 

The  highness  born  above  the  need  to  soar? 


With  none  of  these  beginnings,  dost  thou  dare 
To  ape  the  greatness  of  the  great? 
Can  Genius  ancestors  create — 

Make  old  halls  of  its  castles-in-the-air? 


-o  127  o- 


Genius  may  work  its  miracles  with  time — 
May  make  past  present  and  forelive 
The  future;  but  it  cannot  give 

Blood-heirship  of  antiquity  sublime. 


But  shall  Caste's  colorless  anachronism 
Change  to  the  rainbow's  living  hues 
And  glory  to  thy  sons  diffuse 

By  being  passed  through  thy  poetic  prism? 


Pity  the  son  with  intellect  too  numb 
To  see  that  thy  one  natal  word 
Surnames  him  over  all  absurd 

Tinsel  of  titles  known  to  Christendom ! 


MADONNA 

Hail,  O  Madonna!  my  woman,  my  lady! 

Mine  by  my  poesy,  mine  by  my  dreams! 
Not  as  a  nymph  of  the  leafily  shady 

Myth  of  the  wilderness,  nor  as  the  limbs 
Nude  of  a  naiad  in  fountains  and  streams 

Glimpsed  as  she  flashes,  and  plashes,  and  swims, 
But  as  a  real  live  woman,  Madonna! 

Future-forefeeling  old  poets,  then  seeing 

Nowhere  in  all  the  world  lady  like  mine, 
Feigned  an  ideal  aerial  being, 

Oread  or  dryad,  that,  piped  to  by  Pan, 
Danced  in  the  solitudes,  where  the  divine 

Passion  of  beauty  has  visited  man 
Always  in  guise  of  my  woman,  Madonna! 

129 


<*  130  o- 

Or  the  delicious  keen  charm  of  illusion 

(Rapturous  chase  of  the  soul  after  sense) 
Fabled  they,  dreaming  the  plunge  and  the  fusion 

Into  clear  waters  of  womanly  shapes: 
Bosoms  that  hid  in  the  crystal  defense, 

Bodies  that  made  hurried  bashful  escapes 
Into  the  fountains,  revealed  thee,  Madonna! 

Thou  art  the  mystery,  thou  art  the  beauty, 

Left  to  the  world  from  the  world's  age  of  gold ; 
Thou  art  the  thought  holding  heroes  to  duty; 
Thou  art  that  secret  in  music  and  rhyme 
Which  has  been  guessed  at,  but  never  been  told; 
Thou  art  the  dreamed-of  and  longed-for  of  time, 
Glory  of  womanhood,  lady  Madonna! 


ALONE 


Alone!  alone! 
Forth  out  of  the  darkness, 
Back  into  the  darkness, 
We  come  and  we  go  alone. 


O  birth!  O  death! 
Lone  cry  from  the  midnight, 
Moan  lost  in  the  midnight, 

A  catch  and  a  lapse  of  breath! 


O  youth !  fleet  dream ! 
We  sleep  out  of  heaven, 
We  dream  down  from  heaven, 
Then  wake  from  the  fleeting  dream. 

131 


182- 


No  more!  no  more! 
Youth's  gladness  of  living, 
Love's  madness  of  living, 

Can  come  back  to  me  no  more. 


Those  glad,  mad  years! 
How,  dancing  and  singing, 
How  danced  and  went  winging 
Those  passionate  choral  years! 


To  be!  to  live! 
What  being,  what  living, 
What  largess  of  living 

The  blood  of  the  boy  can  give ! 


O  earth!  O  heaven! 
Earth  glad  with  all  beauty, 
And  no  hint  of  duty 

From  all  the  glad  blue  of  heaven ! 


Sun,  moon,  and  stars! 
Lakes,  woods  with  birds  flying 
Through  them,  and  the  crying 
Of  insects  beneath  the  stars ! 


Then  life  in  love! 
Life's  torrent-stream  steadied, 
Stopt,  flowed  back,  and  eddied 
About  in  the  pool  of  love. 


From  boy  to  man! 
Bridge  built  of  a  rainbow — 
Love's  luminous  rainbow, 

Which  fadeth  from  boy  to  man. 


Love's  fading  bow! 
Still  following  hither, 
I  follow  on  whither 

It  lures  me  and  I  must  go. 


Yes,  follow  on! 
Love's  rainbow-ideal, 
So  nigh  and  so  real, 
Still  flies,  but  I  follow  on. 


For  love  is  all! 
Hope,  pleasure,  ambition, 
Fame's  fullest  fruition, 

Are  nothing;  for  love  is  all. 


But  age  grows  lone! 
For  age  is  unlovely — 
Age  wins  not  the  lovely; — 
We  go  as  we  came,  alone. 


Alone!  alone! 
Forth  out  of  the  darkness, 
Back  into  the  darkness, 
We  come  and  we  go  alone. 


SHIPS  COMING   IN. 

I  lay  upon  a  rock  that  jutted  to  the  sea. 
Twilight  came  down  out  of  the  pine-woods  back  of  me, 
And,  stealing  on  the  waters,  met  the  sudden  moon, 
Rushed  into  her  kiss,  and  sank  to  a  dead  white  swoon. 
Then  forthwith  all  the  ocean's  flat  marmorean  floor 
Ran  to  a  silver  flux  and  melted  to  the  shore. 
The  light  was  an  eddy  of  day  back  hither  swirled 
(The  haunting  ghost  of  light  from  the  tomb  of  a  world). 
That  made  all  the  skied  amphitheater  a  scene 


Of  mystery  in  shadow  and  glory  in  sheen. 

I  lay  there  on  the  rock  and  thought  of  all  had  been, 

I  lay  and  watched  my  ships  come  in,  my  ships  come  in. 


Sail,  O  ships !  my  home-voyaging  ships ! 
Sail  from  the  sunlit  side  of  the  world ; 

Climb  the  watery  bulge  of  the  globe ; 
Pass  the  line  where  the  orient  dips 
In  the  sea,  and,  with  canvas  unfurled, 
Take  yon  moon's  glory  on  as  a  robe  : 
From  wherever  your  sailing  has  been, 
Sail,  ships,  hither,  sail  hither,  sail  in. 


<-137o 

Ship !  that  flew  out  of  port  with  thy  wings 
Dipt  in  morning,  is  yon  phantom  thou — 

Moonlit  phantom  that  drifts  to  the  strand 
And  no  freight  and  no  passenger  brings? 
Yet  see !  one  there  alive  on  the  prow, 
In  his  gaze  the  sick  hunger  for  land : 
Hope !  my  Captain  !  that  sailed  out  to  win 
All  our  world — conquered  Captain,  sail  in. 

Ship !  that  pushed  to  the  tropical  zone, 
Touched  spice-islands  in  summery  seas, 

Then,  in  mad  equatorial  gales, 
Went  adrift  with  one  mariner  lone — 

Bring  him  back  from  the  sunned  Caribbees, 
Bring  him  in  with  thy  storm-tattered  sails 
Love !  my  Sailor !  once  life's  happy  twin, 
Now  sweet  ghost  of  life,  specter !  sail  in. 


Ship !  that  steered  for  the  boreal  stars, 

And,  bewitched  by  the  weird  northern  lights, 

Cramped  through  ice-packs  and  wintered  in  snows 
Heaped  to  the  deck  and  piled  to  the  spars, 
Thou  hast  brought  from  the  long  arctic  nights 

Only  one,  and  him  famished  and  froze : 
Fame!  my  Helmsman!     Anatomy  thin 
Propt  to  the  wheel,  stark  Helmsman,  sail  in. 

Ship !  that  went  out  to  traffic  with  Ind, 

Hugged  the  Gold  Coast,  and  doubled  Good  Hope, 

When  full  sail  on  the  Asian  sea, 
Thou  wast  caught  by  a  contrary  wind 

And  blown  down  the  world's  southerly  slope 

And  thence  upward  and  hither  to  me : 
Ship,  whose  lading  did  never  begin, 
With  this  moonshine  for  cargo !  sail  in. 


Ship !  that  searched  round  the  world  for  new  lands, 
Sounded  new  seas  and  charted  new  skies, 

Studied  new  stars,  new  sights  of  the  sun, 
Then  plowed  keel  in  the  ooze  and  the  sands — 
There  in  shallows  thy  mystery  lies, 

When  all  the  deeps  thy  sailing  has  done : 
Psyche  wove  but  the  Parcae  did  spin 
Warp  and  woof  of  thy  sail  sailing  in. 

Ship !  that  struck  the  horizon's  sea-line 
And  there  vanished  away  in  the  blue, 

Seemed  that  thy  sail  went  into  the  sky, 
And  not  down  the  east  ocean's  decline : 
Is  naught,  then,  but  the  underworld  true, 

And  yon  overworld  naught  but  a  lie  ? 
Faith !  my  Anchor !  all  rusted  with  sin, 
There  on  deck  of  this  ship  sailing  in ! 


140  <v 


Then,  as  I  lay  there  with  the  sick  soul  in  my  eyes, 
A  thundercloud  that  had  loomed  up  the  western  skies 
Went  suddenly  across  the  moon  and  made  eclipse 
That  blotted  all  the  sea  and  those  assembling  ships. 


1887. 


Date  Due 


MAY 


1947 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


